Weaving words and telling tales.

LOL. My Family.

“Hey!” Delivery truck sounds like it could use a muffler—he has to shout. “Get down here, I got the stuff!”

“Got it!”

The ‘stuff’ is fresh garden stuff and a microwave. The one I’ve got right now is three bags of popcorn away from being completely dead. (It’s moving steadily slower—I knew it was time to get the thing replaced when it took nearabouts ten minutes to pop a bag of popcorn.)

I make my way downstairs and see my dad, who happens to be next to a young man who looks vaguely familiar. I don’t have any sort of recognition going on, until I make a point of looking directly at him (it’s easier for me not to look directly at males lately), when suddenly I realize—this kid looks like what I would if I’d inherited the Y chromosome instead of the X from our father. That, and the “OMFG OMG STRANGE MALE RUN” response doesn’t kick in.

“Kid bro!” I squeal and run up to the truck.

(I think I should mention that my kid brother Jules is athletic, LUDICROUSLY smart, has my tolerance for bullshit from other people (read: JACK AND SHIT), was one of the first people to out me as bi (He caught me staring at a certain android on a certain series that went well over nine thousand memes—and for the record he has no problem with it), and plays video games the way I do: almost all the time and can discuss everything about all the ones he plays.

In other words, DEFINITELY my little bro.)

There’s handshakes and hugging and squealing as we follow Dad lugging the thing upstairs. We catch up on the way up, talking about sports, classes, books, video games, how blind Dad is (FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m blinder. He wears a prescription about half that of mine).

Soon enough we’re in the middle of the apartment, deciding the middle of the floor’s just fine. We’re still discussing stuff, in this case video games, and then we get into the talk of video games. Dad and I start suggesting a certain game for Jules to play, and it’s quite possibly the weirdest thing any random passerby would have seen—short woman in a hairnet and big tall guy built like Bruce Lee pretty much squeeing over a game, complete with “Eee!” and “I KNOW!” screams, when—

“Nah. Final Fantasy’s kiddie.”

I SWEAR I heard the cosmic record needle scratch. Both I and my dad do an ACTUAL double-take.

The thing about my little brother (who I should mention has a head and counting over me at about half the age) is, he’s got a good head on his shoulders—growing up he was a big reader, had a precocious vocabulary (What two-year-old knows the word ‘mayonnaise?!), and would know what was going on even if you did that thing where you would s-p-e-l-l the questionable word.

So the fact that he finds something that my father and I did—still do—a lot of bonding over to be ‘kiddie?’ Ohohoho, we let him have it, and he just looked LOST. (Two titles off the top of my head have a major genocide as a plot element. That ain’t kiddie, kiddo.)

I’m pretty sure he thinks we’re a couple of geeks.
Also, he’d be right about that. We are. But ask him about Mortal Kombat’s mythos, and he’s just as bad—or rather, just as good. 😀